260,000-Color Polymer OLED Claimed As Industry First

Said to be the world's first prototype of a full-color polymer organic light emitting display (OLED), the new display has a diagonal measurement of 2.85" and supports 260,000 colors in quarter common intermediate format (QCIF) as well as a 64-level (6-bit) gray scale. The breakthrough was achieved by developing technology for forming a light-emitting polymer film on a low-temperature polysilicon (LTPS) thin-film-transistor (TFT) array. According to the company, all commercial OLEDs are either mono-color or area-color, and use small molecules in the light-emitting organic film rather than polymers. They require vacuum-evaporation technology in the production process, which is unsuitable for the fabrication of large-sized, high-resolution displays on a large mother glass substrate, as required in the TFT production process. The company has overcome these limitations with the development of new ink-jet printing and solvent-material technologies for depositing a polymer film. Both advances can be applied to the achievement of high-resolution displays and efficient mass production without any need for a vacuum environment.The company expects to commercialize OLEDs in April 2002 with the initial target being cellular phones and small- and medium-sized PDAs. Major specifications include: a pixel number of 144RGB x 176 (QCIF); pixel pitch of 0.318 mm x 0.318 mm (80 pixels per inch); display size of 2.85"; and a gradation of 64-gray scale.